A high-speed network environment typically includes network devices such as routers and switches used for facilitating delivery of information packets and/or data traffic from source devices to destination devices via one or more communication networks. Information pertaining to the transfer of data packet(s) and/or frame(s) through the network(s) is usually embedded within the packet and/or frame itself. Each packet, for instance, traveling through multiple nodes via one or more communications networks such as Internet and/or Ethernet can typically be handled independently from other packets in a packet stream or traffic. Each node which may include routing, switching, and/or bridging engines processes incoming packets or frames, and determines where the packet(s) or frame(s) should be forwarded.
In a high-speed computing network environment, it is critical to maintain high speed traffic flows such as circuit emulation service (“CES”) circuits with minimal data loss and/or packet drop when the data traffic crosses multiple communications networks or multi-domain networks. In equipment supporting circuit emulation services, a customer or network administrator can provision one or more different timing domains. Each timing domain typically contains a group of CES circuits that are based on the same reference clock. To ensure the reproduced CES circuit, on the far-side of the packet network, accurately represents the original CES circuit, it is critical that the circuit emulation service is assigned the correct timing domain.
A problem associated with a high-speed computing network is that each CES circuit, for instance, can be clocked at a different or unique reference clock. A conventional approach to obtain a recovered clock is manual operation wherein a network administrator manually assigns a clock domain to a circuit on a node.